Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill

Drew Hendry Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Carry-over motion: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 6th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

The Bill that we debate today is important, but our discourse on it focuses on existing, not future, technology. The Scottish National party welcomes the fact that we can support the Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill in its general direction of travel, but we will suggest some helpful adjustments to its navigation if we feel that a wrong turn is being taken. We will also be ready to give the Minister a push if he looks like he is discharging badly.

If we are to change public perception and fully enjoy the benefits of new technology, we need to talk about how we move people not just physically, but emotionally. The reality is that planning for transport should be about planning for the future of people. Accepting only what we are presented with here and now misses the mark. If we are to make a success of the Bill, it is vital that we seek not only to address the known practicalities of the technology as they are presented today, but to have a vision for the way in which the future of transport can make life better for people. I am talking not just about those in the urban areas and those who are well off, but about those who constantly find themselves as an afterthought, be it through geography, different levels of deprivation, disability or lack of opportunity. The Bill must develop a more rounded and inclusive vision as it progresses through this House.

We welcome the sensible measures in the Bill. We will offer our views on those that need more work or more thought with regard to the future, and we will work constructively to progress the legislation. In return, we hope that our points will receive positive consideration.

Common ground can immediately be established on a number of current issues. I am talking about measures that encourage development of economic opportunities for growth and technology in autonomous and electric vehicle sectors; that simplify insurance processes and measures to keep people safe; that match the Scottish Government’s proposals to phase out all petroleum and diesel-fuelled vehicles by 2050; and that curb the malignant use of laser pens on all vehicles, including aircraft.

As has been intonated, there are many questions to be answered and much to add to the Bill to make progress successful. Let me start with autonomous vehicles. This is a global market that presents significant opportunities. KPMG estimates the value to be around £900 billion by 2025, so maximising advantage means acting with pace, but decisions should include ensuring that there are positive outcomes for people beyond the short-term economic reach. We advocate that there is an imperative to ensure that as many people as possible benefit.

There is the potential for a step change in transport for those with disabilities and those suffering from social exclusion as a result of mobility issues. We would also seek to ensure that, even if they do not live in a city, people are not left out and that those in rural areas are enabled to take part meaningfully. Thoughtful consideration must therefore be given to rural areas for the use of autonomous vehicles, and discussions should take place with organisations that represent disabled people to seek their views on the matter.

The Government must also take action to ensure that they grasp the opportunity to promote training and skills and create well-paid jobs. The employment opportunities within the technology and autonomous vehicles sector are new territory. We must therefore ensure that more people can access those opportunities, especially the still disgracefully untapped resource that is women. If the promised bounty is to be properly realised, work must be done to encourage girls and young women to be central to it.

Back in 2015, the Government provided £19 million to launch four driverless car schemes, based in Milton Keynes, Bristol and London. If further testing is to be undertaken, Scotland must be included in the next round. Similarly, although we welcome the industrial strategy in relation to an autonomous vehicle hub, we would look for co-operation between the UK and Scottish Governments to find suitable sites in Scotland.

Road safety is of paramount concern, as is clarity over responsibilities for insurance claims, and there is much work to be done to provide reassurance and put in place the safeguards required to create public confidence in driverless technology. It would be helpful to consider the needs as they will develop and provide guidance on aspects that may not yet be at the forefront of consideration, such as the possible certification of vehicles without steering wheels or control pedals. The right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) made an interesting point about responsibility. What will autonomous vehicles mean for drink-driving regulations, for example? In all circumstances, will a sole passenger be considered just that—a passenger—with those responsibilities, or will they be considered to be jointly responsible?

Consideration will need to be given to future support networks. Autonomous vehicles will need specialist test centres, which should be equitably located around the nations of the UK, and people deserve to know how that will work in future. There will of course need to be strong mobile 4G and 5G signals for the technology to operate properly, so yet again we call on the Government to ensure that the next spectrum licensing auction is conducted with a rural-proofing measure, or an “inside out” policy that has been shown to work in other European countries.

Of course, with the guidance systems also will come a huge amount of data. Vehicles will, by virtue of their use, be tracked and records of journeys will be collated. The data can be enormously useful for improving performance, but there is the potential for it to be misused, so what measures will be put in place to protect the rights of our citizens? A right, except in circumstances of investigating an accident or offence, should be given to the public to own the data and actively authorise any non-performance-related use.

On electric vehicles, we welcome the plan to make every car and van zero-emission by 2050, as that now complements the Scottish Government’s plan to phase out all petrol and diesel vehicles by that year. Encouragement for the public to use electric vehicles must now be stepped up. Incentives such as the grants to purchase vehicles, free installation of home charging points, no road tax and no company car tax for pure electric vehicles should be continued while new incentives are developed. At the start of 2015, Scotland had already seen the uptake of more than 200 electric vehicles across our local authorities. The Scottish Government invested more than £11 million to develop the ChargePlace Scotland network of more than 900 publicly available charging bays, and a £2.5 million grant has been offered to each of the 32 community planning partnerships to help them to buy or lease electric vehicles. That is in addition to the £13 million provided over the past five years to support bus operators to bring in new low-emission buses. Those are great incentives and, as I have said, more can and should be done to encourage further uptake.

Of course there are other zero-emission technologies. Hydrogen is of growing interest in the field, so I was glad to hear the Secretary of State say earlier that there would be encouragement to support alternative fuels such as hydrogen. Scotland already has the Aberdeen Hydrogen Bus Project—the Scottish Government are a key funder—and now Aberdeen has Europe’s largest fleet of hydrogen-powered buses on two routes within the city.

On civil aviation and ATOL, although we welcome the extension of the ATOL agreement, there is a pressing need for the Government to start addressing the questions posed over the UK’s leaving the EU. Will the Secretary of State now give an assurance that the EU package travel directive will be continued? There are similar concerns over passenger rights and compensation, and no word as yet from the Government about whether they will be maintained. I am happy to allow the Secretary of State to intervene if he wants to make comment. No?

UK travellers currently benefit from a huge range of protections. The collapse of Lowcostholidays last summer made the value of the EU package travel directive crystal clear. Given that 76% of UK holidays abroad are outbound to the EU, what will the Government do to guarantee that they will not cave in to the lobbying demands of companies such as Thomas Cook, which said that rights had “gone too far” in favouring passengers?

On vehicle testing, we will be seeking assurances over safety in future operations of DVSA functions. We have concerns over the relentless way in which the UK Government have sought to divest publicly owned and managed facilities. It is clearly an ideological approach, but public safety must be paramount and guarantees are needed that examiners will be regulated and must adhere to procedures at least as strict as those already in use. Will the Secretary of State commit to that?

We welcome clause 22, which makes it an offence to shine a laser beam at any vehicle to dazzle or distract the driver or operator. Laser pen incidents are on the increase. In Scotland, there have been more than 150 incidents in the past 18 months, and 24 at Glasgow airport in February alone. The Scottish National party and the Scottish Government take very seriously any actions that could endanger aircraft, crew and passengers. We strongly support the Civil Aviation Authority’s efforts to publicise the dangers, and Police Scotland’s efforts to prosecute those who maliciously threaten lives in this way. Shining lasers at pilots or drivers could prove fatal, and these moves give clarity over the offence and should greatly improve safety.

While talking about road safety, I urge the UK Government to follow the example of the Scottish Government by taking the opportunity to lower the drink-drive limits. In December 2014, Scotland introduced a blood alcohol limit of 50 mg per 100 ml—lower than the 80 mg per 100 ml in the rest of the UK—resulting in a 7.6% reduction in drink-driving in 2015 compared with the previous year.

In conclusion, we welcome the aims of the Bill, and will work constructively to ensure that it is strengthened and improved. We seek assurances that communities at the periphery in both geography and opportunity are included, that the benefits of the technological advances in vehicles and fuels are shared fairly among all our citizens, and that positive outcomes for all communities are the Government’s first consideration. We want to see clarity and vision in the regulation and public safety issues arising from new vehicles, to give the public the confidence to embrace this step change in transport.

We must now, finally, also have answers to the questions on what happens to the rights of our citizens travelling in Europe following the triggering of article 50. We need a commitment to continuing all of the raft of benefits currently enjoyed by our people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I am generally supportive of the aims of this Bill, not least as the mother of an 18-year-old son who has just passed his driving test, as insuring him is almost impossible. The cheapest quote we have had so far is £1,700. Autonomous vehicles will offer young people and those who have given up driving—the elderly and the disabled—an opportunity to get into vehicles.

I am excited by the technology surrounding autonomous vehicles because much of it is powered by the photonics industry. It is really quite fortuitous that, only a few months ago, we set up the all-party group on photonics. I am delighted to be standing here as the chair of that group. It is almost as if the timing of this Bill has been set especially for us. Driverless cars are operated by light detection and ranging—LIDAR—technology, which allows for smooth traffic flow and reduced fuel consumption. Ultimately, the technology leads to safer transport.

The UK is perfectly placed to develop this technology. We have a world-leading photonics industry. In particular, I wish to highlight the photonics companies across the central belt of Scotland. I also want to mention a group at Oxford University that is developing a low-cost autonomous navigation system. A robot car will navigate using lasers and cameras linked to a computer. A horizontal laser on the number plate detects obstacles and halts the car to avoid a collision, while a vertical laser casts a curtain of light on the surroundings to make a 3D model of the environment. When the car takes the same route the second time, it recognises where it is and can drive accordingly.

A road train, which is a convoy of closely packed vehicles, might be one of the first applications of driverless cars. It is likely that it will appear first on motorways. The hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) raised concerns about his ability to continue to use his motorcycle, but I am sure there will be plenty of roads available that can be used by vehicles operating in a less autonomous fashion. There is certainly a real potential to get traffic moving on our motorways.

We have talked about the possibility of trials and pilots, and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) mentioned the grid system in Glasgow. I will add to that by saying that Glasgow is a perfect urban setting in which to hold a trial.

In Scotland, we have some difficult issues to overcome. We have heard about single-track roads, and while I will not talk about nuns and prams, there are often obstacles such as cattle grids and sheep that these cars will have to take into account. The bigger problem for rural Scotland, and for rural areas across the UK, is how these cars will communicate. Driverless cars have to communicate with their surroundings. If, as is the case in some areas, there is not a 3G network available, how will these cars be able to proceed?

[Drew Hendry]

I raised the subject of mobile connectivity earlier. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is vital that the UK Government take an outside-in approach with new licensing for the mobile spectrum auctions?

[Carol Monaghan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. There is real concern that a lot of the spectrum that has been licensed before has been licensed for the benefit of companies, not consumers, and this is an ongoing problem for many people not just across Scotland, but in rural UK generally.

One of the challenges that we will face as this technology develops is dealing with our massive skills shortage in engineering and photonics. We currently have a huge number of EU nationals working in those fields, but we are yet to see any guarantees for those workers from the Government. We are talking about unilateral guarantees because those highly skilled workers have job prospects worldwide. We should be rolling out the red carpet for them, rather than for a certain President.

I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) that women are a massive group who are ignored in STEM careers. Someone once asked me why I keep going on about getting more women into STEM careers and whether it is just about gender equality. Yes, gender equality is important, but we also have massive skills shortages and a huge group of people whom we are not tapping into. We need to start taking advantage of that raw potential.

[Drew Hendry]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is being generous in giving way. Is it not an absolute scandal that 50% of the potential workforce we need in that industry are not being encouraged in—girls and young women?

[Carol Monaghan]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. One of the big challenges we face as a society is the need to look at the signals we give not just to girls who are considering their career options, but to parents. What are we saying to wider society? An engineer is not just somebody who wears an oily overall; an engineer can also be somebody working in the field of photonics and developing driverless technology. We really need to plug that. We need to see female engineers on programmes such as “EastEnders”, and then we might start to see some progress.

The industrial strategy Green Paper that was published a few weeks ago referred to key enabling technologies. If autonomous vehicles are to progress at a pace that keeps us up to date with the rest of the world, we must ensure that we properly support the photonics and engineering industries and ensure that enabling technologies are given proper priority.

Let me move on to low-emission vehicles. We have heard a few comments today about charging points. What will happen to the national grid when we all arrive home in the evening and plug in our electric vehicles? We already know that the national grid has certain peaks, for example during advert breaks in particular programmes. We can look at smart charging technology that will have different cars charging at different points, but we are still talking about a much higher current being drawn from the national grid, and the source of that energy will be power stations. Are we simply switching from dirty fuel in our cars to dirty fuel in our power stations?

[Drew Hendry]

Again, I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous in giving way. Is not it true that the use of renewable energy is the way ahead to ensure that we can cope with those loads? UK Government policy, by stifling renewable energy, is hampering a technology that could solve that very problem.

[Carol Monaghan]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He has just taken my next point—thanks very much. Once again I will use the phrase “untapped potential”. Renewable energy really is the way ahead. I do not want to get pollution out of our cities only to put it into industrial areas with power stations, whether they are coal, oil, gas or nuclear.